


and tossed aside the weary

by m4rkab



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Gen, a lot of eder being sad, don't tell me he doesn't have them, the discord made me do this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 06:45:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14731943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m4rkab/pseuds/m4rkab
Summary: Eder’s been called dense once or twice before, not only by Hiravias, but he’s not stupid; it doesn’t take him more than a second to realize, with icy clarity, that he’s seen that statue before. And to remember exactly where.Eder finds the Watcher after Eothas rises at Caed Nua.





	and tossed aside the weary

**Author's Note:**

> somehow we ended up talking about eder trying desperately to find you after caed nua is destroyed on the fan discord and,, this happened,,, i haven't written fic in years i am so sorry
> 
> my watcher's name is capra and he's a death godlike.

Life in Dyrford, even as the mayor, has a sort of routine.

It’s not that Edér doesn’t like that. Hel, after all he got up to during the Hollowborn crisis, it’s nice to know he’s not gonna have anything more concerning than a neighborly dispute to deal with. Doesn’t much like those, either, but given an option between that and jumping into an ancient prison to chase after a thousand-year-old Engwithan and all his stolen souls? Well.

This morning, thankfully, there’s nothing demanding his immediate attention. The sun’s just peeking over the trees when the roosters start crowing, and he wakes up slowly, blinking a little sleep out of his eyes. Bright spring sunlight trickles through the gaps between the curtains as Edér gets out of bed, gets dressed, and goes to the kitchen to throw together some eggs.

Used to be he’d offer a quick prayer to Eothas every morning. These days, seeing all he’s seen, well…not quite enough to keep him from believing in his god, but he’s not real certain Eothas deserves that belief, if he’s even still there to notice. When he settles down to eat, he doesn’t bother.

When he’s finished, he goes about the usual tasks – cleans up the little mess he’s created, gets breakfast ready for his pigs outside. Probably his favorite part of the day; they’re always eager to see him in the morning, ostensibly because it means food but Edér’s pretty sure they like him too. Just a bit. He whistles cheerfully as he pushes the door open and walks the short distance to the pen.

The creak of the gate opening is enough to attract attention; they’re all snuggled together in a pile in the little barn he put up for them, but at the noise a familiar rust-red head pops up and the pig gets to his feet, making a beeline in Edér’s direction as the others stretch and start to wake. Edér squats down to meet it.

“Hey there, Bacon,” Edér says, grinning as he scratches behind the pig’s floppy ears. It snuffles excitedly as it tries to bury its nose in the bucket, and Edér laughs as he pushes the animal’s head away. “You gotta wait your turn, buddy. Just let me put it down here, okay?”

The pig trots after him as he walks towards the trough, and a quick whistle draws the rest of them. Edér counts them as he pours the food out, just to make sure nothing’s happened overnight, though far as he knows they haven’t had any real trouble since the Watcher chased out that ogre. Snuffles, Sniffles, Biscuit, Pudge, and Podge. All accounted for.

He steps back to give them room and pats Pudge’s black-spotted side as he nudges past Edér’s legs to reach the trough. “Go on, eat up,” he says, settling the now-empty bucket under the crook of his arm. “And don’t let me hear any of you bullyin’ each other, there’s enough to go around.” He fixes them with a critical eye, which they all cheerfully ignore in the way only animals can.

Not like they aren’t good with each other anyways. He gives Pudge another couple of scratches and straightens up –

– pauses. Edér glances up at the cloud-streaked sky, brow furrowed. Coulda sworn he felt something there, but a quick glance around says nobody else seems to have noticed. He shakes his head. “Gettin’ jumpy in my old age,” he tells Pudge solemnly. “Or do you think mayoral life’s startin’ to get to me?”

The pig snorts into the trough. Edér nods. “Just what I thought.”

He watches them for a few seconds more, not quite managing to shake the feeling that something’s not exactly right. And then – before he can turn and go about his business – this time, the ground vibrates, just faintly, under his feet.

He looks down, squinting, but he knows it’s not just him this time, ‘cause the pigs look around a bit too. Of course, they immediately get back to eating, but that’s enough to tell Edér the weird feeling’s spot on. Doesn’t seem like thunder, either; sure, it’s a little cloudy, but what there is is fluffy white. Harmless enough.

The next one is stronger. It vibrates through his legs, and the pigs all start looking about in earnest and, as he watches, a flock of birds – crows, he thinks – perched on a nearby tree take flight in a flurry of beating wings.

“All right, what the Hel,” Edér says, turning to see if there’s anyone nearby who has a clue what’s going on. He’s still moving when someone screams.

He follows the sound with his eyes, down to the outstretched hand, the dozens of Dyrford residents pausing in their own daily routines to stare wide-eyed at the sky. And when he looks in the same direction, he immediately realizes why.

The construct moving in the distance is colossal. It’s some space away – Edér can only manage to be thankful for that in the back of his head, since it looks like it could crush Dyrford without so much as a thought – and he can’t imagine the trees reaching far past its ankles. Bright white light streams from its brow, so strong he can’t look at it directly, even this far; its entire body is hewn of glowing green adra, and in the weak morning sunlight, he can just barely make out veins of gleaming copper.

Edér’s been called dense once or twice before, not only by Hiravias, but he’s not stupid; it doesn’t take him more than a second to realize, with icy clarity, that he’s seen that statue before. And to remember exactly where.

It should be under Caed Nua. He’s walked across that thing’s hand before, he’s fought a dragon in the shadow of its legs. It has no business walking past Dyrford Village, has no business walking at all for that matter, and the simple fact that it’s here means –

He drops the bucket and bolts for the gate.

It strikes him only distantly that he’s the mayor; he should be taking charge, helping everyone figure this out, if anything. But all he can really think about’s that it’s his best friend, holding Caed Nua, and there’s no way that statue got out easily.

He pulls his old armor on, grabs his blade and shield and his pack, and is out the door before he’s quite finished buckling the last few things on.

He waves the several people trying to talk to him away as he runs down the path, feeling a little bad as he does it but not enough to stop. The realization’s starting to resolve itself into a sort of cold dread in his stomach, even as he slows to a stop by the stables, where Wira’s already woken, watching the statue pass slowly by in the distance.

She turns her head when she hears him coming, eyes wide under her dark hair. “Edér! Did you see –”

“Yeah, I did,” he interrupts, and immediately winces. “Sorry, didn’t mean to be short. But I gotta go. I need River –”

“You’re leaving right now?” She cocks a brow at him, frowning, but doesn’t stop him from hauling the horse’s saddle off its pole at the side of the barn.

“I know it’s bad timin’,” Edér says, throwing the bridle hastily over River’s nose. The horse flicks her ears at him like she’s not sure whether to tell him off for the treatment or not, but after a quick pat she allows it. “But I gotta get to Caed Nua. It’s urgent.”

She doesn’t say anything as he leads River out of her stall and hefts the saddle up over her back, murmuring a quick thanks to the horse when she just lets him do it. They’ve got a good rapport, him and her; maybe she understands some of the anxiety that’s making his hands fumble just a little at the stirrups and the straps across her belly. She’s always been real sweet with him anyways.

“Edér…”

“I know,” he says. “I, uh, don’t think it’s gonna bother us. You just tell everyone to set up like they usually do when I’m gone.” He tightens a last strap and turns to look at her. “I swear, I wouldn’t be leavin’ if this wasn’t important.”

She sighs. “It’s not that I don’t believe you.”

Edér gets a foot in the stirrup and swings himself up onto River’s back. She tosses her head, but otherwise lets him settle down and pick up the reins – kind of her, since he’s sure he hasn’t done that good a job with the tack.

“Look,” she says. “At least tell me what’s going on. The town’s going to want to know, and you obviously know something about…that,” she waves a head in the general direction of the statue, which has not so much as faltered in its movements.

“Somethin’ at Caed Nua did it,” Edér says. “Don’t know what, yet, that’s why I gotta go. And – the pigs. You can take care of ‘em, right?” He tightens his hands on the reins. “I don’t know how long it’ll be. But if I’m more than a couple weeks, keep ‘em. Or give ‘em around to someone else who’ll take care.”

“Of course, but –” She looks confused, and any other time Edér’d stop, but he can’t explain anything else right now. He has to find out what happened.

“Thanks,” he says instead, offering her an apologetic smile, taps the heels of his boots into River’s sides and takes off.

 

* * *

 

 

The road from Dyrford to Caed Nua is a little under two days’ travel on foot, without breaks. Edér’s not planning on taking near that long. Soon as he leaves Dyrford he nudges River into a fast trot. Not that he wouldn’t like to go faster, but he doesn’t want to tire her out too fast.

‘Course, the problem either way is it gives him too much time to _think_ , and things never go great when he’s got that.

For the first couple miles he’s just glancing over his shoulder every so often as the statue gets smaller and smaller behind him, as its earthshaking steps fade off into nothing at all. Then when it all gets quiet but for River’s breathing and the birdsong and insects chirping and he can’t see much of the adra head behind him anymore he starts wondering just _what_ is going on.

He’s been down the Endless Paths more than a couple times. That statue was woven right in with the ground, might as well have been, layers on layers of flooring anchoring it in place and everything else that’d built its home under there. He knows well and good that thing wasn’t moving without help.

He also knows there’s no way Capra’d try to raise it in the first place even if he had a use for the thing. Coming up – Edér’s trying not to think about the damage it has to have done to the keep, much less the people living there. He hasn’t been back in a couple months but the adra fingers around the chapel alone would’ve crushed it like so much splintered wood.

The whole thing – it would have brought the walls down around him, and sure, he survived a biawac before, and everything that went down in Cayron’s Scar, but there’s gotta be a limit and Edér’s trying not to think that Capra’s reached his allotment of luck for a lifetime.

He _has_ to be alive. Edér’s going to just keep telling himself that, no matter how much he dreads actually finding out.

That turns into most of the first day’s ride. He’s actually getting pretty good at convincing himself it won’t be as bad as he thinks it’s gonna be, ignoring the perpetual pit in his stomach until, somewhere around mid-afternoon, he turns a bend and stumbles right over a crater driven in the earth, straight down the middle of the road.

He pulls River to a stop, a command she follows without complaint, and stares down at the giant footprint stamped into the dirt.

It’s wide enough to span the whole of the road and then some. The heel’s driven into the gravel just at the roadside and the rest of it – the trees and branches alike have splintered like they were nothing more than toothpicks, trunks half-buried in the soil. Neat little circles for each of the adra colossus’ toes, each with at least one fully-grown tree decimated under them. That’s the kinda thing that woke up at Caed Nua.

Edér closes his eyes and nudges River on.

They don’t make the whole ride in a day, and Edér feels bad when he finally swings himself off her back in the late evening light. He ties her up to the thickest tree branch he can find, makes sure she’s got some water and grass nearby, loosens the straps around her chest and strips off the bridle. Her sides heave as he scratches her neck, and she shakes her head and stamps at the ground as she starts in on the grass.

“Sorry, girl,” Edér says. He hates to push a horse that hard but he can’t quite regret it, not now. He fishes out a couple carrots from his pack and she crunches them down gratefully and then nibbles gently at his palm, so he hopes he’s forgiven.

He leaves her be while he unfurls his bedroll. He doesn’t need to set a fire – warm enough, with spring creeping steadily into summer, and none of the food he’s brought with him needs it – but it gives him something to do with his hands and another excuse to avoid thinking about what he’s riding towards. When he’s done that, he sits cross-legged on the grass and lights up his pipe and stares out into the trees like he’ll find some distraction there.

Least the whiteleaf helps clear his mind for a bit, but when he’s settled in for bed the thoughts return with a vengeance.

He stares up at the sky and doesn’t catch a wink of sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

In the morning, soon as the first rays of light spill out over the treetops, Edér stands, kicks the fire out into ash, packs everything away, and leads River back onto the road.

She’s a little more standoffish about it this time, and Edér apologizes again as he climbs up into the saddle. “Not far now,” he assures her as she starts forward, picking up speed. Closer they get, though, the more anxious he becomes. Caed Nua’s a big deal these days after all the work that got put into it, after the big battle at Yenwood Field Edér’s heard (exaggerated) songs about more than once. And there’s nothing on the road as they head down.

When they round the last bend, Edér almost doesn’t recognize what he’s ridden up to. He’s kinda been hoping he was mistaken, the entire time, that it was some _other_ giant adra statue, dumb as the thought seems.

Caed Nua’s not there.

The barbican’s completely crumpled, and the ground under it’s jagged and torn. As he rides up and jumps off, though, the second thing that catches his attention’s arguably worse; the guards are still standing there, except they’ve been turned completely to ash.

Edér’s not a Watcher; whatever Capra’d seen there when Thaos died, he hadn’t. But he got the gist, walking through the place, even without what he’d been told. Rows and rows of bodies, ashy husks that disintegrated when you touched them. Souls stolen to form the gods.   

Edér doesn’t need to touch either of them to know what happened.

He grabs for River’s reins and tosses them across the nearest convenient branch. “Stay here, girl. Okay?” he says. The horse snorts at him, lashing her tail, and he turns and clambers over the broken stones, wincing as the movement jostles muscles sore from a hard day’s travel, the rapid flutter of his heart not only from exertion. They cut a little at his hands, but when he finally hauls himself over and sees what remains of the castle the thought of any pain slips right out of his mind.

There’s a gaping hole in the ground where the keep once stood, half-filled with the stone bricks that had once made up its walls. A massive gash in the earth leads from where its hand must have emerged – under the chapel, just like he remembers – to the keep, solid black with depth. There’s nothing left remotely recognizable about any of the other structures around the courtyard, no place where the wall hasn’t been torn to shreds by what must have been the shaking of the ground. Uprooted and splintered trees are tossed every which way across grass matted with fallen earth and stone, and between them there are people.

Figures, turned to the same ash as the guards, frozen running or fallen or reaching for swords. Despite the heat of the late spring day, the sunlight shining bright overhead, Edér feels cold.

He stumbles down the mountain of shattered stone and through the rubble, only paying enough attention to the ground not to drop himself through one of the cavernous pits the statue carved out during its exit, expecting at every moment to see the wings that’ll mark Capra as one of them. But all he sees is people, guards and civilians whose names he doesn’t know for near half-an-hour as he picks his way over the jagged rubble, combing the courtyard side to side as he moves towards the ruins of the main keep.

He won’t pretend there’s not an increasing desperation to the way he sifts through the debris, hoping against hope Capra’s found some way out of it even unrealistic as the idea is. By the time he gets to the actual building, his throat’s tight and he’s calling Capra’s name.

When someone actually responds, it feels like his heart stops.

But it’s not Capra’s voice. It’s a woman’s, faintly familiar, saying, “Hello?”

At this point he’s thoroughly desperate for anything. Edér spins in its direction. “Hey!” he calls back, pulling himself over a splintered piece of wood that he thinks might have once supported Caed Nua’s roof. “Where are you?”

“I’m over here!” the person responds, incredibly close, almost from under his feet – and Edér leans down and yanks up pieces of broken wood and stone and – marble –

“You’ll forgive me if I can’t walk,” the marble bust he’s just uncovered says, and a brief second of confusion washes over him before he remembers. The Steward of Caed Nua.

And somehow she’s still got her soul, when everyone else here…well.

Edér leans down and tugs her out of the rubble with a grunt. Even with only the head, she weighs a hell of a lot, but he manages to pull her out far enough to prop her against the pieces of her own ruined throne.  Two bleached-white antlers lie tossed alongside, and the shattered remnants of a familiar pair of swords. “Thank you,” she says. “Edér, yes?”

“Uh, yeah, that’s me. You know –” he swallows, looking around, “I mean, I know what happened, that statue got out somehow, but –”

The Steward almost seems to hesitate. “We can talk about that in a moment. Have you…found anything left of Capra?”

Edér bristles on automatic. “What do you mean, anything left?”

“I mean…” Her voice falters. “I maintain this keep in his absence, and to that end I can touch his soul. But there’s nothing there.”

“No.” Edér shakes his head, stepping away before he’s even processed the whole sentence. “You’re wrong. He’s gotta be fine.”

The Steward doesn’t argue with him, and Edér’s almost pathetically grateful for that. Even though not knowing, hoping, is worse than just accepting it to begin with. “Have you found him?” she repeats.

“No,” Edér says, again. “I’ve been lookin’, but…do you know, maybe, where he was before…”

She’s quiet for a moment. “The garden, I thought.”

“Alright,” Edér says, squaring his shoulders. “I’m gonna go look. I’ll be back with Capra when I find him.”

The Steward doesn’t say anything to that. Edér climbs his way back out of the bit of the debris she’d fallen in and tries not to think about what she said, but that’s easier said than done. He’s got no reason not to believe her, and if he does –

– he gives a hard shake of his head and keeps going. ‘Course, he doesn’t know all that well where the gardens are. Were. All that despite them being Capra’s favorite place. It’s certainly hard to tell now, like this. He picks his way close to the ruined walls of the keep and Brighthollow instead – the place he spent so many nights hardly looks recognizable now – until he thinks he’s pretty close.

There are a couple of ashen bodies nearby, flash-frozen staring up at where Caed Nua’s towers used to be. The destroyed remnants of something that might have once been a planter, a bunch of torn up flowers and herbs scattered all over the place, little flecks of color among the grass and dirt.

Behind an overturned chunk of red-hued ceramic, a flicker of something black. Edér freezes midstep, squinting. It flutters in the breeze like a torn piece of cloth – like a feather.

He only stares for a second before he moves towards it. All he can think – if it’s still black, still moving, that means he’s not ash, that means he should still be alive.

“Capra!” he calls, but there’s not even the slightest movement in reply. He speeds up, and as he gets closer it becomes even clearer that it’s a wing, if folded at an angle it shouldn’t be, and when he’s close enough to look beyond the rubble in the way –

He’s not ash. But he’s crumpled awkwardly on the ground, one wing bent like a broken ship-mast – Edér can see blood and the faint glimmer of bone – the other splayed across the ground and half-buried under a mound of dirt. Stretched to their full size, and curled in on himself, he looks almost small. And there’s not a single sign of life in the way his head rests horn-first on the dirt, arms hanging loosely over each other, skeletal legs awkwardly tangled together.

Edér practically bounds forward, reaching out for the Watcher as soon as he’s close enough. One hand fastens over his arm, and he shakes Capra like he did before with the nightmares, when no amount of shouting’d get him to wake up, but nothing happens. There’s no resistance; Capra rolls limply with the movement, and Edér draws back, wide-eyed.

Next try, he presses two fingers awkwardly up under the edge of Capra’s jaw and holds his breath and still, for all that hope, he can hardly believe it when he feels a slow, steady heartbeat.

The relief that floods through him makes his legs weak, but all that still doesn’t explain why he’s unconscious. Sure seems like he hasn’t moved since the statue appeared. Edér fumbles a little in his haste to check again, to make sure he wasn’t imagining, but it’s a beat, sure as anything, and when he holds a hand up over his nose and mouth he can feel the equally rhythmic puffs of breath.

“Hey!” he barks again, grabbing both shoulders this time. All it serves to do is make Capra’s head roll with alarming limpness. The movement jostles his broken wing free of its previous position, and even when it crumples to the ground, red-streaked bone gleaming among dark feathers and dried blood, he doesn’t so much as twitch.

Edér grits his teeth. But at least this is proof he’s alive, that the Steward’s wrong. And maybe she can figure what’s going on, if Edér can get him that far.

It’s hard to find a way to carry him, specially with his wing broken like it is, but in the end Edér’s just gotta ignore that, since he seems out anyways. Doesn’t stop him wincing every time it bumps something, but the Steward doesn’t have any arms to help.

Takes longer than it should for him to, and every second he’s thinking Capra will finally wake up. _Hoping_ Capra will wake up. But he never does. Not when his wing gets stuck against a broken piece of rock right up against the bone, not when Edér has to drag him up and down piles of jagged debris. His tail and legs trail limply behind him, clattering against the stone.

When he finally gets back to where the Steward is his arms are threatening to give out on him, but he lowers Capra down to the grass and looks at her. “See,” he says, with a confidence he doesn’t feel. “Fine.”

“That’s…” The Steward’s voice wavers a little. “There’s nothing there.”

Edér freezes. “What?”

“It’s his body,” she says. “But his soul is gone. Like the Hollowborn.”

Edér stares at her, and then back down at Capra. Doesn’t move, but he thinks – remembers Elafa’s Hollowborn boy that was the first one he’d seen, with that glassy fixed stare, the unnatural emptiness. He’s abruptly, painfully glad that the Watcher is a death godlike.

“How?” Edér retorts. “If his soul’s not there then why ain’t he gettin’ all ashy?”

“I don’t know.” He’s never really heard upset in her tone, not that he’s had occasion to talk to her much, but it makes some of his terror-fueled anger fade. “But he survived Cilant Lis too.”

“That ain’t survivin’,” Edér bites out, digging his nails into the meat of his palm. “What the Hel happened?”

“The statue rose,” the Steward says, like it’s all that simple. But she doesn’t stop. “It brought a biawac with it, and I felt it take up the souls of everyone in the keep. And when it turned…” She sighs. “It had Eothas’ mark on its brow.”

Edér stares at her. Not that he doesn’t understand what she’s getting at, but putting the words together’s another thing entirely. “You’re sayin’…” he laughs humorlessly. “You’re sayin’ it’s Eothas that did this.”

“If I had to take a guess,” the Steward says, “yes.”

Edér stands there for a minute. Just staring, out at the hole in the ground and the rubble and the soulless body in front of him. Doesn’t know how long he stands there, but eventually he just reaches for his pipe, lights it with a couple fumbling strikes.

He sits down on the nearest piece of stone.

Before Sun-in-Shadow, he mighta argued, said she couldn’t be sure. But these days, knowing what he knows, that sounds just like the gods. No reason for anyone else to wear the sun and stars. And he thinks he knows pretty well what the gods do with souls.

“You know,” he says, slowly, after a minute. “Used to think when my god came again, he’d forgive us.” He casts a glance over the destruction. “But I guess that’s the trouble with dreams. We all gotta wake up.” His mouth twists. “Don’t think we’re the ones needin’ forgiveness for this.”

The Steward gives him a bit, before she says, “Did you see him?”

Edér takes a puff from his pipe. “Uh huh,” he says. “Walkin’ by Dyrford. Didn’t even look in our direction, but I knew somethin’ must’ve happened.”

“Did you see where he was going?”

“I dunno.” Edér chomps on the end of his pipe, waves a hand lamely at the ground. “Looked like he was headin’ down towards the coast.”

The Steward lets that sit for a minute. Edér’s about to ask her if she’s got any ideas, but she beats him to it. “We won’t catch him on land,” she says. “Not like this. It seems our best option is to sail.”

Edér squints at her, scuffing his boot on the dirt. “You wanna go after him?”

“Yes,” the Steward says. “If he took everyone else’s…he must still have Capra’s soul. And if his body is still intact…maybe we can get it back.”

Edér pauses, considering. Some of the resignation fades, a little. He’s still not sure how Capra’s not ash, but long as he’s not…not a stretch to assume Eothas has got the key to fixing it.

Or maybe they’re just both very desperate. Edér exhales some smoke and drags his hand down his face, but he’s already standing in the next moment. No matter how tenuous an idea it is, it’s a plan. “Right, well. Don’t suppose you’ve got a ship anywhere?”

“Unfortunately, no,” she says. “We can leave from Defiance Bay, though we’ll have to find something to get us there. There may be some carts near the walls that weren’t destroyed when Eothas emerged, if you could look.”

“Yeah.” Edér pulls himself up on tired legs and puts out his pipe. Reminds himself – Eothas can wait, least until they’ve got everything else sorted out. Capra’s missing soul. “Think I can do that.”

Turns out she’s not wrong. The couple that aren’t broken one way or another are overturned, though; takes a bit of pulling to get the largest back on its wheels, and a hell of a lot more than that to maneuver it through the destruction of the courtyard. Eventually he gets it close enough that he can justify moving the Steward up to it, and drags Capra the rest of the way.

First thing he does when the Watcher’s safe in the back of the wagon is to bind up his wing. Lucky there’s still more than a bit of spare fabric to go around, not destroyed so easily, and a hell of a lot of broken wood. He’s patched birds up before, mostly when he was a kid, and a lot of ‘em got better, enough that he got to watch them fly away.

This isn’t exactly on the same scale; Capra’s got the height of an aumaua and his wings are big enough to match, but he thinks he does all right. Binds it up against a quick frame he’s rigged out of wood fragments, lays it carefully out against the side of the cart. He guesses if there’s a perk to having your soul stolen it’s that you can’t feel pain.

He bundles up the fragments of the two blades and lays them next to Capra as well. The Watcher’s never been one for swords, but after what they all went through to get them he thinks they might as well take them along.

“Think that’s gonna have to do,” he tells the Steward.

“Good,” she says. “Now. If we’re going to purchase a ship, we’ll need the money to do it.”

Turns out Caed Nua might be gone, but the Steward’s still got some connection to the rubble. She points him the best places to go and he gathers what he can, finds any valuables left in the ruins that haven’t fallen to the bottom of the paths or just been destroyed. Over the next few hours he loads up the rickety old cart, and every time he passes by where Capra and the Steward sit he holds his breath, looks too long, waiting – hoping – that this will be the moment the Watcher’ll wake up.

Never is.

By the time he’s got everything they can think of it’s late, the setting sun painting the sky orange and pink and deep blue, and the past couple days on no sleep whatsoever is starting to hit him real hard. He tries not to let it – they don’t have time, especially when he checks again and the beat under his fingers is even fainter than last.

The Steward still notices, and he’s brought River over and is halfway to hitching her up to the cart before she stops him. “Edér. This might be urgent, but you still need to rest. We can leave in the morning.”

Edér falters, turns. “He’s gettin’ weaker every minute we let Eothas walk off with his soul,” he says. “I ain’t got the time.”

“If you fall asleep while we’re riding, you won’t be any use to him,” the Steward says. “Take a few hours. You need them.”

He knows she’s right, of course. Still stares at her a couple drawn-out seconds more before he deflates. “All right,” he says. “But just a couple hours. You wake me if it lasts any longer.”

“Very well,” the Steward replies.

He gets everything sorted out, sets up his bedroll, but before he goes to lay down he grabs Capra’s hand, gives it a squeeze before he lets go. “We’re gonna get your soul back,” he says. “I swear.”

Capra, of course, doesn’t answer.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s hard to maneuver even just himself around all the rubble, let alone with the cart, and that’d be just in daylight, not morning so early the sky’s still black. But somehow, with a few hours’ sleep under his belt, he manages to lead River, cart attached, back to the barbican they arrived at.

“We got everything we need?” he asks the Steward.

The bust takes a moment to think. “I believe so. Enough to sell, at least.” She’s quiet for a moment. “I never expected to leave Caed Nua. Much less like this.”

“Don’t think anyone expected that,” Edér says, but there’s no real humor in it. He swings himself up onto the seat and takes River’s reins in his hands, looks over his shoulder at Capra, where his wing’s still draped carefully against the side.

He doesn’t move.

“Let’s go find Eothas,” Edér says. “Get his soul back. And maybe some answers.”

He twitches the reins, and the cart moves off down the path at a slow roll.

When they reach the fork in the road, Edér only looks back towards Dyrford once as the cart rolls off towards Defiance Bay.


End file.
